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The Dream Raid?

The IFPI has announced a raid by Italyís financial police – Guardia di Finanza (GdF) Ė that hauled, alongside 2,000 CDs and DVDís:

“eight guns, five rifles, ammunition for rifles and machine guns, two kilograms of TNT and bomb making equipment [and] several stolen archaeological treasures, such as ancient Roman and Greek pottery”

Of course the music industry is keen to ally music piracy as closely as possible with organized crime in order to make it more of a priority for government and this looks like a dream raid in that context. But in this case I think theyíre over playing their cards a little. Letís assume half of the 2,000 discs were CDs, thatís essentially one gun and two grams of explosive per every 75 CDs (not quite sure where the Greco-Roman remains fit in). As strict as the IFPIís anti-piracy measures may be, I donít think they quite warrant that sort of firepower. The weapons cache is reflective of a serious crime gang, the CDs and DVDs are on a tiny scale in comparison. Commercial counterfeiters with that sort of muscle have entire pressing plants pushing out tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of discs, not 2,000.

In short, what has most probably happened here is that an organized crime gang has been raided (probably for something totally unrelated to music piracy) and they happened to have some pirated CDs they may have been moving on. And of course Sicily has something of a reputation for organized crime (just donít tell my Sicilian wife I said that).